I am a husband, father, rabid backyard gardener, and blogger on nature, books, films and other subjects based on the premise that there's a garden metaphor for everything. Still utopian and idealistic after all these years, I cover the arts for the Boston Globe's 'South' regional sections and also write about environmental issues. My short stories, poems, book reviews, and creative nonfiction have appeared in numerous literary publications. I was named a Finalist in the Massachusetts Artist Grant Program for a story about my "greatest generation" father.

The Light of Snow

In the light of snowa bird with a tawny breast relaxes on a branch no thicker than my fingernailshadows form, the sky clears, the world shapes up on the crystalline white planesthicker branches highlighted darker forms, stones and bricks, lifted to the lightContrast has come to the worldgloom banished A breeze riffles the branchthe beak of the perched bird dips once or twiceyes this is the shrub with winter berriesbut this bird is not seriousthis is not the way to eat berriesbalanced on a figment of light this is the way to pose in the light of snow

in the light of snow

The Hawk Who Loved Me

I remember the hawk who loved mePosing by the roadside on a dull day or beside the pleasures of the harbor daring me, enticing meThe way he stood (or she: I'll never know)following me, the pursuer with the camera looking down from the crotch of each suitable treebeguiling me with a bath in the puddlehad avian lover ever exposed so many soaking feathers?I took his hand, but his talon ripped my flesh

What Gulls Eat in the Winter

the gulls eat snowin the high noon lightthe strand exposed at low tiderocks and the waste of the ocean floorsnow gleamed everywhere, reflecting the grinning sunAll this have I done, the sun seemed to say, I have whipped up the currents, roiled the windsI blew my hot breath upon the ocean, squirreled up highs and lows, inversions, reversions, wild temptations loosed my vengeance on the placid sprawling life that endures, or thinks it does, all winter by the seaI have sent my blanket of snow to warm my childrenand feed the gulls

oh no, said the moonyou did what you could but you were toothless without dear old changeable meI pointed the waves and urged on the waters against the bric-a-brac shorelines built by the little sprawling creaturesthat covet the earthI filled their busy days with clutternow the gulls and the sea ravens, the gregarious guillemotand garnet-loving gannets, have bones to pick

oh no, said the gull, I feed where I willsqueal and scream and sing my claiming song and boast of fine feathered finds you do nothing without me I pick clean the sunshine and soar in the rain, ride the winds to the accidental heaven of Big Bird Land where the seas cover all the shoresbirds have tongues and all your snow tastes of ice cream

Mine for a Season

Water, and the rushingSpring breaks somewhere in the keening hills where the old earth keeps timethe birds spool it out,soft needles for their nest, willow sheaths to frame itmud to spawn the foody bits with legs or finstadpole tails ungluing from the integrity of onenessto try it on their own,however long "it" lasts

Freshets every morning, steel clinking in ice waterLong liquid songs every night, lighting the world's fires The birds forget they know meI sit at the place where you walk halfway acrosshalfway a godall day without voices,though the farm track runs behind meLife before telephones, before carsbefore the need

The stream that streaks and dances in the rumbleremembers my daysWhen it tells them to mein its leaping mineral voice they turn into something else